In a Grade 5 to 8 Urban, Public School

By Daisy Martinez-DiCarlo, LPC, LMHC, CP, PAT 

Certified School Counselor

Introduction

J.L. Moreno, the father of psychodrama, gave us the gift of action methods because he believed that we solve problems best when we are utilizing our entire body and our whole selves.  Moreno’s thinking originated when he observed the authentic spontaneity that children have while a group of them were playing at the Augarten at the beginning of the twentieth century.  Moreno believed that we create new and adequate solutions best when we are connected to that authentic part of ourselves or spontaneity within us and that we access this part of ourselves when we warm up in our bodies using action, which mainly involves utilizing movement.  In fact, walking and talking or soliloquizing creates the bilateral stimulation in the brain which is necessary for our thoughts to connect to our feelings and this regulates us and helps us to warm up to our spontaneity and to catalyze our creativity. 

Moreno believed that when we are in our bodies, connected to ourselves and warmed up, we are able to access our spontaneity.  Our spontaneity acts as a catalyst to our creativity and can be defined as a novel response to an old situation or a novel and adequate response to a new situation.  Spontaneity is our readiness to act.  Spontaneity interacts with creativity or our maternal center to create cultural conserves in the universe.  Creativity is the act itself.  Cultural conserves are the by-product of the interaction between our spontaneity and creativity and act to preserve our cultural heritage.  Cultural conserves can be re-created by warming up to our spontaneity once again.

Moreno was concerned that we would become robotic and lose our spontaneity, which would stagnate our creation of the universe.  His philosophy of creativity and spontaneity is central to psychodrama because through psychodrama, we can always warm up and access our spontaneity thereby making it possible for us to create new cultural conserves and to continue to co-create the universe.  Although spontaneity cannot be conserved, when we become anxious and lose touch with ourselves and our spontaneity, we can utilize the cannon of creativity as a conceptual framework for warming up to our spontaneity.  By warming up, we can access our spontaneity and catalyze our creativity to act in novel and adequate ways which help us to co-create.

Background

I was asked to teach social skills classes to the students in an urban, grade 5 to 8, charter school.  The classes run anywhere from 60 to 80 minutes and are comprised of about 20 to 25 students who are largely from minority backgrounds, including students who are English language learners, have 504’s and/or IEP’s.  Most of the students qualified  for free or reduced lunch.  This article will explain how the author taught an evidence-based social skills curriculum, RULER, while integrating the evidence-based model of psychodrama, sociometry and group psychotherapy as an experiential teaching method, to grades 5 to 8 students in a way which enabled them to communicate their emotions effectively, and to learn their social-emotional curriculum’s skills in action, which helped to improve their behaviors and supported them to build an interconnected classroom community.  When the students were able to warm up in their bodies and access their spontaneity, they were better able to learn and apply the social skills strategies, to connect to their educators and to each other and to co-create an inter-connected classroom.  Furthermore, when action methods were used by their counselor educators, students felt understood and connected to one another, and they were able to create an interconnected community which led to more effective learning of their social skills curriculum in their regular education classroom setting as measured by the decrease in the number of referrals to the Deans to remove students from the classroom.

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Literature Review

Amatruda (2006) wrote about the powerful impact that using action methods can have on a group of Special Education children when incorporating it into teaching them social skills in small groups.  She utilized action methods to help Special Education children in an urban, public school setting and helped them to value themselves and to value others through action.   This supported their behaviors of concern to decrease and connected the children to their spontaneity and creativity in ways that helped them to have empathy for each other, supported them to create solutions to their emotions and conflicts and gave a proper voice to their feelings.  (Amatruda, 2006).

Using a Locogram to teach the Mood Meter and 

To Build a Positive Classroom Climate

The initial classes which were taught in September 2019 and October 2019 focused on utilizing action methods to teach students how to identify their feelings using the RULER curriculum’s mood meter.  Instead of teaching these tools in a traditional didactic way where students are sitting at their desks listening to their teacher or watching a video, students were able to learn these skills by experiencing them in action and through the movement of their bodies in experiential ways.

In a locogram, we can locate specific criteria or a value that represents our status or truth and verbalize it.  In the first class, a loco-gram of scarves was utilized as an action method where different color scarves are placed on the floor spaced enough apart that students stood up and placed themselves next to the color of the scarf, which represented the colors on the RULER mood meter, with which they identified.  “How do you feel about being back to school?” I asked.  “Place yourself next to the color scarf which represents how you feel”.  The other school counselor who co-taught this class with me located where he felt on the logogram and physically stood next to the color scarf which represented how he felt modeling for the students.  After  he modeled, students placed themselves next to the scarf which represented how they felt.  Then, students took turns sharing by labeling their feelings and I helped them to notice how many of them shared common feelings about being back to school by saying ,”look around you and notice how much you have in common with your classmates who feel the same way you do.”  This supported the students to connect to each other in positive ways and to feel understood by both their educators and their classmates.  Through my observations, I noted that when students feel this level of inter-connectedness, they do not feel ashamed or alone and are better able to listen and to learn because they feel accepted for who they are by their teachers and peers.

Using Doubling to Teach The Mood Meter

And to Build a Positive Classroom Climate

Moreno gave us the action method of doubling which is when we connect to someone in such a way that we are able to give a voice to their unspoken emotions and psychological experiences.  Instead of asking the students how they feel or mirroring what they feel from an observer role, we merge with them psychologically and in service of them, we help them to voice their unspoken truths from their role or position.  I doubled a student who stood next to the scarves which represented mad and sad by standing next to him and asking him, “Can I help be your inside voice?”  Once I received his consent, I said aloud, “If I’m you, I feel mad and sad.”   He accepted this as his truth and I asked him to repeat it, which he did.  This provided him and his classmates with the behavioral modeling they needed to express how they feel in action since he was standing near the scarves whose colors represented these feelings and was able to move around the scarves while talking.  As discussed above, this level of movement which integrates talking with moving creates bilateral stimulation of the brain, connects thoughts to feelings, and provides an experiential learning method which effectively supports students to learn the social skills necessary to build an interconnected classroom community.  Moreover, doubling makes us feel understood, visible and connected to the person who is doubling us.  Therefore, I invited students to choose other students who would be able to double them.  I observed that students doubling students helped to create a positive, interconnected classroom community because they felt understood by their own peers.  On the rare occasion that a student was doubled incorrectly, I thanked both the student being doubled and the student doing the doubling for supporting the student being doubled to verbalize their feelings more clearly.

Using Role Reversal to Teach Alternative Perspective Taking

And to Build a Classroom Community

Moreno also gave us the action method of role reversal which is when we physically place ourselves in someone else’s shoes.  I asked the student who felt mad and sad about being back to school referenced above to reverse roles with the girl who was standing on the opposite side next to yellow, which represented that she was happy to be back to school.  He physically moved to the yellow scarf and she physically moved next to the blue and red scarves when they role reversed.  When I asked him to repeat what she said as if he was her, his perspective widened as he stepped into the shoes of a peer who is happy to be back to school because she is able to see old friends and teachers and meet new friends and teachers.  The student who felt mad and sad also felt validated when he was doubled by her and when she repeated what he said in the role reversal about how difficult it is to transition back to the nitty grittiness of being back to school after having been off for the summer.  I observed that this role reversal enabled the students to gain someone else’s perspective, to connect to one another and to continue to build a safe classroom community where students are connected to one another in positive ways.

Using a Spectogram to Build a Positive Classroom Climate

And to Introduce the “Meta-Moment”

During another social skills classroom, the students stood up and walked over to the scarves which I placed opposite one another representing two poles on the floor and they physically placed themselves on a continuum of how they feel about Wednesdays.  Half of the students placed themselves on one end of the spectogram indicating that they hated Wednesdays and the other half of the students placed themselves in the middle of the spectrogram indicating that they neither love nor hate Wednesdays and/or they feel numb about Wednesdays.   No one placed themselves on the end of the spectrum indicating that they love Wednesdays.  According to Kole, a spectogram enables us to envision the opposite extremes as well as the gray areas of our emotions.

The spectrogram immediately enabled me to see the negative feelings which the students experienced towards school in general.  Many of the students were reading and doing math below grade level and had received multiple disciplinary referrals.  Their school experiences up to this point in time had not been positive.  I focused on narrating the commonalities they shared in either hating or not caring about Wednesdays.  “Most of you either hate Wednesdays or could care less about Wednesdays.”  I then asked each student to share why they chose to place themselves where they did on the spectogram.  Many of the students shared peripheral reasons such as how hard it was to wake up in the morning and how difficult it was to sustain their attention during a long school day.  The students were able to see how they connected to one another’s emotions including their relationships to one another.  I observed that this spectogram made visible their connections to one another and consequently, making visible their connections helped to continue to build a positive classroom community.  Furthermore, it enabled students to verbalize how they feel in action and to become grounded in their interconnectedness prior to learning a new skill.

Then, student A shared that he hates Wednesdays because he always gets in trouble.  I doubled for him by asking, “Can I be your inside voice?”  With his consent, I doubled that, “I get in trouble so much that it feels like I can’t control myself.”  He nodded in agreement and the doubling made him feel less shame and isolation about his behaviors of concern.  I was then able to double that, “We can control ourselves when we notice how we are feeling and when we do things to feel more or less of what we feel”.   This spectogram exercise was a great way to introduce the steps to taking a meta-moment and to support students to buy in to this decision-making strategy which is taught as part of their social skills curriculum.   

Using Sociometry and a Locogram to Teach the “Meta-Moment”

And to Build a Positive Classroom Community

By using the “step in” exercise, I observed the sociometry or patterns of choices and invisible relationships in the group become visible.  Students stand in a circle with me and the other counselor.  I stepped in the said, “Who like me has a tough time taking a meta-moment”?  Most of the boys stepped into the circle making visible their connection to me and their connection to one another when it comes to their difficulty in taking meta-moments.  The “meta-moment” is a decision making process broken down into steps which helps us to pause when were are emotionally triggered and it a part of the RULER curriculum which is taught (citation).  According to Brackett (April, 2020), the steps to taking a meta-moment are:  1) Sense the shift when you are activated in the way you feel and think; 2) Stop or Pause to create space before you respond. Breathe.  3)  See your best self by visualizing the best parts of yourself and think about your reputation and how you want others to see you.  4) Strategize and Act to do or say something that your best self would do.  

I utilized scarves once again to demarcate each of the stages of taking a meta-moment.  I asked students to locate the step of the meta-moment which is the most difficult for them to follow when they are upset and need to calm down and make a wise decision.  Most of the students placed themselves next to the scarves which represented stopping or pausing and Strategizing.  Student A shared that he cannot feel his feelings and that he can’t tell when to stop himself.  This gave us an opportunity to discuss what bodily cues we receive when our mood shifts and to trust the data that we receive from our bodies to sense what we feel and to use that information to stop ourselves.

While discussing the difficulty in stopping themselves, Student B and Student C got into an argument after Student C said something mean to Student B. Student B was standing next to the scarf representing the step “stop/pause”.  She and I continued to make eye contact and I doubled for her that “I can stop myself with support from my teachers” and she was able to de-escalate and Student C was removed by there other counselor to take some space in a different location than Student B.

During their sharing phase, most of the students said that they want their classmates to be respectful to one another.  They said that they felt comfortable and calm when everyone shared their feelings in appropriate ways.

Using Sociodrama to Teach Empathy 

Below I will describe how I directed a sociodrama in a middle school group to support the middle school students to address and prevent bullying – their common experience – by learning effective social skills, including how I incorporated warm-up, action and sharing.

During the warm-up, I read the middle schoolers the story, “Those Shoes” about a boy who is bullied because of the dilapidated sneakers he wears to school every day.  I then asked the middle schoolers to envision a spectrum of empathy on the floor after engaging them in a conversation regarding the definitions of bullying and empathy.  I used scarves to demarcate the three parts to the spectrogram.  I asked them to stand on the blue scarf which I placed on one end of the spectrogram if they try hard to show empathy for others.  I also asked them to stand in the middle of the spectrogram which I marked with a yellow scarf if they select only some people with whom they show empathy.  Lastly, I asked them to stand on the other end of the spectogram which I marked with a purple scarf if they do not care to show empathy for others.  The middle schoolers engaged in this sociodramatic warm up in preparation for action.  I then asked for volunteers to share regarding why they chose to stand on their position on the empathy spectogram.  Lastly, during the warm up, I asked for volunteers to play the main characters of the collective story about bullying which I had just read to them, “Those Shoes”.  The middle schoolers volunteered to play the main characters in the sociodrama.

During the action part of the sociodrama, the middle schoolers enacted their community drama about bullying which we extrapolated from the story I had just read to them. I utilized action methods during the action phase to help deepen the story and to teach the middle school children the empathy training they needed to combat bullying.  For example, when the middle school children laughed when the main character was made fun of, I taught them to double the laughter by asking, “Who can be the laughter’s inside voice?”  When the middle schoolers were unable to double, I utilized the mirror position to have the students who laughed observe the scene from a distance and say what they were thinking and feeling.  When the children experienced some distance from the scene, they felt safer to voice their anger and sadness about the bullying they were witnessing.  Furthermore, during the role reversal, I asked the characters who bullied the victim to reverse roles with him and the middle schoolers were able to experience an alternative perspective thereby expanding their capacity to show empathy for others.  The middle schoolers were able to enact solutions to their collective drama once action methods of doubling, role reversal and the mirror were utilized as described above.

During the sharing part of the sociodrama, I had the students de-role and structured the sharing with the middle school children to support them to share times that they experienced empathy either directly or indirectly and ways they identified with the group drama they enacted.  Instead of sharing times that they bullied or were bullied, students were able to share stories of times they showed empathy for others and to connect their story to the collective story, “Those Shoes” from the role of empathy.  I then asked the teenagers to share utilizing the same spectrogram format which I had used during the warm up and I noticed a positive shift occurred in many of the students’ perspectives on empathy. 

The sociodrama gave a voice to the collective story of the group and students were able to experience action insight by enacting their group’s drama.  During the warm up, I read a story about bullying to which the middle school students could relate because this was a metaphor for their collective drama.  I also used a spectogram to help the students to identify how they felt about the topics which would be enacted in the action phase.  In the action phase, I utilized action methods to help the middle school students to enact their community story.  During the sharing, the students shared their own identification with the story and placed themselves on the same empathy spectrogram which marked their own perspective on bullying and empathy.  Their action insight became evident in their change in demeanor and the middle school students became more engaged in learning how to show empathy for others.  The sociodrama enabled them to address bullying, which is a common collective problem they experience in middle school and to practice solutions to this social problem.